Showing posts with label oil. Show all posts
Showing posts with label oil. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Mouldering away, the Levee Street Tank Farm, Vicksburg, Mississippi

A petroleum tank farm sits at the junction of Levee and Fairground Streets. The facility has been unused since before I moved to Vicksburg in the mid-1980s. For many years, the fence was intact and the gate closed. Then, for several years, I saw a "For Sale" by the General Services Administration sign. The GSA is the agency that manages real estate and other property (like motor vehicles) of the US Government. Then there were no signs at all for a few years.
Levee Street tank farm, April 7, 2018
In April, the gate was open, no one was around - it was too good to resist.
Former compressor building? 
The brick building on the right in the photograph above once must have contained compressors or other heavy industrial machinery. Evidence for this are the concrete supports, now semi-engulfed by vines and jungle. I have watched this building for years as its roof collapsed. 
View of Fairground Street Keystone Bridge, April 8, 1990, 4×5" Fujichrome transparency from Tachihara camera, 75mm f/8 Schneider Super-Angulon lens
Many years ago, my daughter and I climbed one of the metal stairs to the top of a tank. I carried up my 4×5"camera and tripod. There was a pungent smell of petroleum products coming from open valves. No one cared about fumes in 1990? From the top was a great view of the old Fairground Street Keystone bridge. The bridge still stands, but it has been closed to car and pedestrian traffic for 20 years and part of the approach on the west side has collapsed.
This is another 1990 view of tanks and piping, taken on Fujichrome 4×5" film with a 75mm f/8 Schneider Super-Angulon lens. Surprisingly, last week, when I biked by the site, I saw a fellow on a lawnmower cutting the grass. Someone is doing some maintenance there.

The 2018 black and white photographs are from Kodak TMax 100 film with a Pentax Spotmatic camera and the 24mm f/3.5 Super-Multi-Coated Takumar lens. This is fine early-1970s equipment. This version of the lens was made from 1972 to 1976, has 9 elements in 8 groups, and features multi-coating on the glass surfaces to reduce flare and reflections from the internal air-glass surfaces. I mounted the camera on a tripod.

Friday, April 17, 2015

Abandoned Fuel Terminal in Vicksburg

Just below Washington Street at 600 Depot Street is an abandoned fuel oil distributor. The yellow pages show this this was once Moak Petroleum Products , Inc., but I do not know dates of operation or who owns the site now. The gate is open and you can walk right in. The grounds reek of gasoline or solvent. Some tank or pipe is leaking. I wonder if the place would ignite?
This is the scene looking east. Washington Street is up on the bluff.
Looking north,you see the former Mississippi Hardware in the distance (now closed and subject of a future post).
The shed in the first picture became a dumping ground for records and files from the company. I saw liquor bottles, so vagrants are using the building. The roof looks intact, so it is dry on a wet night, a good place for a homeless person, except for the fumes.
This building is secure and un-vandalized.
The pumps are the old-fashioned type with rotating numbers rather than modern LCD displays. I did not see ethanol stickers. (Editorial note: ethanol - another stupid politically-mandated mess that did not save energy nor make us energy-independent, and had serious and damaging environmental consequences. Also, it ruins older cars.)

Photographs taken with a tripod-mounted FujiFilm X-E1 digital camera, raw files processed with PhotoNinja software to convert to black and white.